This episode of Equity covers Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy and a TikTok-fueled crowdfunding effort to revive it as a 'people's airline,' SpaceXAI's pivot to becoming a neocloud by renting GPUs to Anthropic, and the accelerating race in enterprise AI with major deals from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Sierra. The hosts also discuss crypto's resurgence, autonomous trucking contracts, and the Pentagon's growing investment in AI.
Summarized by Podsumo
Spirit Airlines is bankrupt, but a TikToker's campaign to crowdfund a 'people's airline' has gained viral attention, despite widespread skepticism about its success.
SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) is dissolving as a separate entity and pivoting to a neocloud model, renting GPUs to Anthropic after its own Grok model failed to gain traction in enterprise.
Enterprise AI is booming: OpenAI and Anthropic announced a joint venture, Sierra raised $950M, and SAP spent ~€1B on an AI startup, signaling a gold rush in enterprise tools and coding.
Crypto is back in the news with $3.2B in new funds from Katie Haun and a16z, though regulatory tailwinds haven't yet translated to a sustained price surge.
The Pentagon is aggressively adopting AI from big players like Nvidia and smaller startups, but ethical red lines remain a contentious issue as seen in Anthropic's disputes.
"It takes the sort of well-known worst airline in the country that has affected so many lives for the collective psychosis to happen where people say we can do this better than Delta. — Kirsten Korsak"
"Musk has said so many terrible things about Anthropic. And yet like, when push comes to shove, he comes hat in hand to Anthropic.... — Sean O'Kane"
"Employees are just using the tools that they like best and like trying to dictate that within a corporate setting through these very large contracts like it's over. — Kirsten Korsak"